With almost unbearable sadness, I turn our attention to the end of an era: the end of the Harry Potter book series.To think, it was only 1997 when “Harry Potter and the School of Neat Magic That Proves It’s OK to be a Nerd” was released. After leafing through the novel about 20 times-which is, coincidentally, the number of syllables in the title-my brain would not accept the possibility of there being a better book.
For upon completing those inimitable 17 chapters-coincidentally, 17 is a favorite number of mine-I snatched my collections of Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Jonathan Swift, C.S. Lewis (who ripped off Harry Potter, the bastard), Mark Twain, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Harlan Ellison, Sophocles, Alan Moore, etc. and torched them in the fireplace, making sure to daub my own excrement on their pages before incineration.
But author–excuse me–genius J.K. Rowling proved me wrong. There was a better book than the first entry of the Harry Potter series. And that was the second branch of the series (I say branch because these books are akin to an all-encompassing tree, with different assortments of fruit and berries on each branch): “Harry Potter and His Short But Potent Wand.” However, I decided not to burn the first entry because it’s still pretty decent and I have an obsession to nurture.
That’s right, obsession. Many times I wouldn’t analyze or question how J.K. was writing the actual story. My preoccupation amounted to gasping at the situations my favorite characters went through and repeating those very happenings out loud after reading them. For example, I would go, “There’s my beloved shifty instructor, Snape, killing off Dumbledore!” or, “Wow, the greatest character of all time, Harry Potter, got married and had three kids!” Also, I apologize if I spoiled the endings of the sixth and seventh books, respectively.
Notwithstanding the truth of the previous paragraphs, the best aspect of the Harry Potter series cannot be found within them. For the incredible magic of this series lay in its ability to teach children how to read, similar to how the Backstreet Boys once taught them to dance. With this series of seven books, the necessity to actually sit down and teach children about reading was lost. As the adage says, “The book is a better teacher than a teacher.”
There is a war going on in this country, and it’s a battle of grammatically correct sentences. And J.K. will win eventually.
Take action. Stop going to class and read Harry Potter. Stop developing a varied taste in literature and read Harry Potter. Stop hanging out in the newly opened Union–damn, it’s not open.
No matter-read Harry Potter. Otherwise, you will suffer for eons.
The worm dieth not, my friend.